Chasing the Other Tisdale by Jessica Jefferson

Narrated by Beverley A. Crick

Jessica Jefferson is an author I’ve been aware of for a while and isn’t one I’ve either read or listened to before, but seeing Beverley A. Crick’s name listed as the narrator for her Regency Blooms series gave me a good reason to pick up one of her books. While I have some quibbles about the pacing and some aspects of the writing, Chasing the Other Tisdale was an enjoyable, if somewhat predictable, listen.

Lillian – Lilly – Tisdale is the second of four daughters (all named after flora and fauna; Ambrosia, Tamsin and Rose are the others) and is often referred to as “the other Tisdale”, overshadowed by the remarkable beauty and popularity of her older sister. When we first meet her, she is just seventeen; awkward, a little dumpy, a little spotty and not at all confident in herself. She falls in love-at-first-sight with her brother’s friend, the handsome, charming, man-about-town, Will Colton, when she almost literally falls from a tree into his lap. The two strike up an unlikely friendship which continues after Will returns to London and they start writing to each other on a regular basis. The letters themselves are fairly disappointing in content; I’d hoped we would hear more of the couple falling for each other through their correspondence, but that doesn’t really happen. It’s clear, however, that Lilly is in love with Will while he doesn’t quite understand, at this juncture, exactly why Lilly’s letters mean so much to him.

The correspondence and friendship continue until, on a subsequent visit to the Tisdales’, Will fails to defend Lilly to a couple of his friends who are disparaging her looks and temperament. His omission is overheard by her brother Thomas, who insists that Will cease writing to Lilly and that their friendship must end because he doesn’t want Will to break his sister’s heart. Chastened, Will accepts the truth of Thomas’ words and does as his friend asks. Lilly is heartbroken at the sudden cessation of Will’s letters, but when tragedy strikes and Will rushes to her side, she can no longer deny the truth of her feelings and confesses her love, even though Will makes it clear he sees her more as a friend than anyone in whom he might take a romantic interest.

Will’s father, Viscount Colton is pressuring Will to marry the daughter of the Earl of Devonshire because he needs the dowry she will bring with her. Will is adamant in his refusal, but the viscount’s money worries are pressing, and he eventually presents Will with an ultimatum – marry the girl or leave the country… and for reasons I won’t disclose here, Will decides to do the right thing for once in his life and opts for the latter.

Two years pass during which Lilly hears nothing from or of Will and moves on with her life. She is greatly changed from the insecure teenager she was and has become a poised and lovely young woman who is much admired and sought after by the gentlemen of society. On the verge of receiving a proposal from a wealthy marquess, Lilly’s peace of mind is shattered when she learns that Will Colton has returned to England in the wake of his father’s death – and at first she doesn’t want to see him. But Will is now determined to fight for the woman he loves; can he convince Lilly that he’s a changed man, and that he’ll never leave her again?

Lilly and Will are engaging characters, and I tend to like “ugly duckling” stories, especially when the hero has actually seen and appreciated the heroine for who she truly is before she becomes a swan. Their friendship is nicely drawn and there’s a definite emotional connection between them; I really felt Lilly’s disappointment when Will gives her the “you’ve got a great personality” talk while all she wants at that point is for him to see her as an attractive woman. She’s a well-defined character and her insecurities are easy to understand, but Will, on the other hand, is another of those rake-but-not-really types so commonly found in historical romance. When he returns to England after his long absence, he describes himself as a changed man – but I didn’t see what was so wrong with him in the first place, and didn’t notice any specific changes other than that his clothes were worn and he was having to live in a not particularly nice area owing to his not having inherited money along with his title. The pacing in the second half of the book is uneven, too, and the ending is a serious anti-climax. I had thought to give the story a B- or a B grade, but there’s a huge gap in the action between chapters 29 and 30 which ruined the ending. I try not to give spoilers in reviews, but this one is unavoidable; chapter 29 ends with things between Will and Lilly unresolved, although looking as though they may be heading in a positive direction, but chapter 30 opens just a few days before their wedding! I had to check that I’d transferred all the chapters of the story onto my mp3 player and then went back to the previous chapter to make sure I hadn’t missed anything – and I hadn’t. We don’t get to hear Will and Lilly resolving their differences and we don’t hear his proposal; all we get is a sex scene that appears to have been included for the sake of it, and an epilogue which adds little to the story overall. I also noticed some really strange word choices on the author’s part: there’s mention of an arduous suitor (surely she means ardent or amorous?), a deviant sister (shouldn’t that have been devious?) and Lilly talks about paying an exerbonite/exurbanite fee for something (I don’t have a printed copy and can’t check) – when surely, that should have been exorbitant? Things like that pull me right out of any story, and while I know that narrators do sometimes mispronounce or mis-read things, I find it difficult to believe they were all narrator errors.

Which brings me to Beverley A. Crick, who delivers exactly the sort of well-paced, emotionally nuanced and well-acted performance I have come to expect from her. She differentiates effectively between all the female characters – especially between Lilly and Ambrosia – and has a nice line in seductive “other women”, such as Mrs. White in this story, who is given a smoothly rounded tone with a touch of coquettishness and a hint of steel beneath. She has a way of making her heroes sound appropriately masculine without lowering the pitch of her voice to any great degree, but her male voices are somewhat limited, especially when, as here, there are several male characters of similar age and station. That’s not to say one can’t tell that there are different characters speaking because there are subtle differences between them, but I sometimes needed to listen for the dialogue tags to work out exactly which of the secondary male characters was talking. The principals are always identifiable, however, which is the important thing, and those are fairly minor criticisms in terms of the performance as a whole.

I can’t wholeheartedly recommend Chasing the Other Tisdale, although I did enjoy it right up until those last few chapters. Beverley A. Crick’s engaging performance is a definite plus, and if you enjoy her work, as I do, that might be good enough reason to give this a listen in spite of the disappointing ending.

Caz